


nobody knows (we love)

by bunjunnie (DRIPPINJUN)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, Boys In Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29580792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DRIPPINJUN/pseuds/bunjunnie
Summary: lucas and mark share a room the night before an ice hockey match, their love for one another ensuesorlucas wong and the never ending marriage saga
Relationships: Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64
Collections: Challenge #5 — I heard a secret..





	nobody knows (we love)

quiet laced through the air. the single road that tracked past the hotel was bare of any passing traffic, the characteristic hum of vehicles that tended to soothe the city to sleep only a distant memory. the dim lighting in the hotel room barely illuminated mark’s face, the hazy yellow glow that hung right above him only bringing rise to curiously shaped shadows tripping across his skin. yukhei watched idly as the younger boy tugged the drawstrings on his shorts further out, tying them into a messy bow when they were sitting close enough to his hips. usually, his own legs would be bare beneath the bedsheets; but something about the cheap floral print amalgamating the duvet design had made him rethink that strategy. 

his phone vibrated from where it had been discarded on the bedside table, the noise penetrative and unwelcome. mark looked over at him when the phone vibrated again, quirking his eyebrow up pointedly. “you gonna check that?” his expression remained bemused as yukhei rolled his eyes, fumbling behind himself for the device regardless. he didn’t look away from the younger boy, gaze tracking across his fingers as he smeared moisturiser over his cheeks. 

“it’s just jeno asking about strategy for tomorrow,” he swiped the messages open anyway, typing out a quick response to the other winger. the sound of his nails against the screen was soothingly rhythmic for a moment, but his phone went down almost as quickly as he had picked it up. he turned to mark expectantly, only to find him still facing away. yukhei was honestly considering timing him the next time that he got ready for bed, just so that the younger boy could see how ridiculously long his night time routine took. 

realistically, he shouldn’t be waiting for mark to go to sleep. the puck drop wasn’t until six in the evening, but their coaches always liked to remind them about how fundamental sleep was to peak athletic performance. he supposed there was probably something else in there as well to do with the fact that sponsorships didn’t want their products promoted by people with bruise dark shadows under their eyes. one slightly short night of sleep wouldn’t cut off his brand deals, though. and if mark was the reason for it then yukhei was more than happy to accept that. his eyes tracked over the already packed bag on the floor; he knew that his jersey was folded up perfectly inside, his skates tucked just to the right, a velvet box hidden under his shower gel. the image made his stomach knot ever so slightly. 

he was pulled away by mark’s feet finally, finally padding across the floor. his socks were patterned with tiny foxes, rolling across the seams. yukhei thought that it was devastatingly cute - even if he found mark’s habit of sleeping with socks on sickening. there was nothing more disconcerting than waking up in the middle of the night and feeling fabric brushing against his shins. he tugged back the corner of the covers a little, just enough that the younger boy could crowd in beside him. when they were still in the honeymoon phase, the two of them had often moved copious amounts of hotel furniture to force two single beds together. nowadays, they just curled up in one. it also helped to prevent the horrible ritual of yukhei dropping a bedside cabinet on his foot at half seven in the morning on game days.

mark shifted over awkwardly onto his side, propping his head up on his hand as he stared at yukhei. their legs were knocking against one another’s, mark’s proportions meaning that his feet just barely brushed along the line of the older boy’s calves. his eyes were soft, honeying further the longer that he gazed at his partner. yukhei felt terrifyingly visible beneath his stare. as if the younger boy could see everything that had ever made him himself. it was like all the bricks that had collected to form the enigma of his soul crumbled at the very touch of the younger boy. even the deepest of scars turned to smoke in an instant. “hey, you.” his voice felt foreign to his own ears, thick with sleep and low in his chest. 

mark’s lips turned up at the corners, a grin splitting his cheeks instantly, “hi.” there was something tantalising about his energy, the way that his joy was tangible in the corners of every room that he walked into. yukhei could remember the exact moment that he had first set eyes on the other boy, mark had looked as if someone had handed him the stars. the most minuscule of things could bring that excitement to him in a second. it wasn’t as if either of them had ever been subdued. and the company that they kept weren’t shining examples of tranquility; hockey players didn’t tend to have silence as a trait. but yukhei still found mark’s genuine pleasure in existence to be tantalising. “how are you feeling about the game?” 

the small talk was unnecessary. they both could, and had, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning in the past debating the finer points of life. spaghetti against tagliatelle, the cinematic masterpiece that was garfield, why trip hop would never be a real genre of music (although yukhei still maintained that it would.) but yukhei understood the words for what they truly were: badly masked fear. and so he indulged the younger boy. “not too bad,” he started, mirroring the way that mark was lying, “obviously my heart isn’t, like, beating at a normal rate. i think we can take them though. just as long as we don’t go too hard, too fast.” mark nodded at his words, chewing at the loose skin on his lip.

he lifted his free arm into the air, tracing out vague formations that had been sketched onto the whiteboard at their home training grounds that morning. his eyelids fluttered close as he visualised the movements, “i’m a little scared that they’re going to put that massive guy up against me.” he eventually admitted, the idea that had clearly been stuck in his throat spilling out at long last. mark was short for a defender; short for a hockey player in general to be fair, but it meant that sometimes the opposing players seemed like an insurmountable force. last season he had ended up benched for eight weeks after getting into a fight with a seven foot centre. those had been a brutal two months.

yukhei reached up to trap the younger boy’s hand in his own, gently easing it back down to the bed and smoothing his thumb over mark’s knuckles in a repetitive motion. “the blues aren’t violent players,” mark threaded his fingers through the older boy’s, letting his head drop fully down into the pillow, “even if he’s marking you, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.” the younger boy hummed a soft sound that suggested something akin to agreement, letting the conversation taper out into the air around them. yukhei stared down at their interlaced fingers, tracing a soft curve over the base of mark’s ring finger, picturing what it would look like encased in silver.

the younger boy laughed sharply at the movement, tugging his hand away quickly as his eyes flew open to fix yukhei with a mockingly accusatory glare, “you know i’m ticklish, don’t be evil, dude.” yukhei thought that the sound was beautiful: filling the small gap in between them with euphoria.

“okay, okay, i’m sorry,” he managed to get out through his own critically wide smile. both of their voices were overly loud in the eye of the storm, but neither made an effort to be any quieter. he chased mark’s hand back into his own, the fact that his own was much larger gave him a bit of an unfair advantage in the matter. he raised their interlaced fingers to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of the younger boy’s palm before he let their hands drop once more.

mark slowly released his grip, shifting over so that he was pressed up against the older boy’s bare chest. his breaths were featherlight against the exposed skin, just scarcely dragging over the tattoo that was smeared across yukhei’s ribcage. the older boy almost unconsciously let his own arm wrap around the boy beneath him, drawing their bodies ever so slightly closer to one another. mark looked up at the older boy through his eyelashes, gaze shot through with a look of utter content. yukhei wasn’t exactly sure what possessed him to interrupt the blissful haze of domesticity, “do you think they know?” his eyes were still locked onto mark’s own. 

to anybody else the question would probably have seemed ridiculously vague, but mark had been reading yukhei like a book from the very moment that they first met. he shook his head as vehemently as was possible from his current position, however, his voice was gentle when he spoke, “they can’t possibly know.” the double meaning in his words was obvious. because nobody was allowed to know. anyone knowing would jeopardised their careers, force them to abandon the dreams that they had chased for so painfully long. no matter which way they chose to skew it, they would have to lose a part of themselves to keep another. “why are you thinking about that anyways?”

yukhei hummed softly under his breath, drawing his gaze away from mark’s face to focus on a crack in the plaster on the walls. he found himself remembering how his stomach had clenched as he walked into the jewellers wholly alone, itching to call kun for just the barest amount of support. how he had almost sobbed when he stashed the box into his gym bag, desperate just to show somebody and get it off his chest. how he had almost let it all slip to ten in a drunken moment of weakness. instead of voicing that to mark, he shook his head slightly, “i just thought that yangyang looked at me funny when we said that we were sharing a room again.”

the younger boy huffed out a laugh, “you were very clear about the fact that we were rooming together. it was cute.” his hair splayed out across yukhei’s arm as he moved slightly, wriggling into a more comfortable position. the dark strands were soft, longer than he would usually keep them because they’d been travelling to games at a strange rate this season. soon it would probably be at the point where he would have to tie it up, or at least wear a headband underneath his helmet. yukhei thought that it was hopelessly endearing. he ran his fingers through the strands, gently twisting them and forming patterns.

“you’re cute,” he rebuffed quietly, letting his train of thought tail off. mark punched his chest lightly, but didn’t deny the statement, yukhei could feel the younger boy’s cheeks turning red hot against his skin. if they were still younger, mark would have rejected the compliment until the both of them regretted that it had ever been said, they had both grown since then. yukhei could still remember being foolishly naive, barely past the brink of adulthood and already certain that he knew exactly how his life would plan out. instead, the universe had thrown a mark shaped black hole in his direction.

the covers rustled as mark curled his feet up behind him, burrowing deeper into the covers. yukhei wasn’t quite sure how late it was, it had been just past midnight when he had last been on his phone, but the passing of time since then had ebbed indeterminably. “it would be nice if they did know,” mark whispered after a short period of silence. there was a certain wistful longing to his tone; as if it was only just now dawning on him what they had lost. yukhei couldn’t count the amount of times he had had to physically restrain himself from reaching for mark in practise. their teammates were their family. hiding this from them sometimes felt like a betrayal of their trust. 

he nodded, his lips brushing against mark’s forehead as he spoke, “we’d get teased all the time.” his voice was overly fond, interlocking with memories of their teammates, but he didn’t particularly mind. 

“sicheng probably wouldn’t care,” mark mumbled in response, his own tone equally shot through with warmth. “do you remember when we found out that dejun had been hiding a girlfriend from us for literal months and he acted like it was no big deal?”

“oh god, yes, and the way sungchan pestered him for a reaction every five minutes?” yukhei felt his own being pang with a certain longing, a want for an environment that was so wholly forbidden to them. even if the other boys would still love them anyhow, it would be too easy for it to jump to their coaches and managers and pr staff and it could only be a downwards spiral from there.

“kun was like thirty seconds away from cancelling practise, i swear, if sicheng hadn’t answered that then we wouldn’t have been forced to do puck handling all afternoon.” he pulled a face, nose scrunching up in disdain at the memory. mark always liked to complain about the way that his fingers felt after handling sessions. yukhei always thought that he was being dramatic, since they were on the ice for the exact amount of time that they would usually be, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t utterly endearing.

the older boy just nodded sagely at the words, “the coaches have been out for us since the day that jeno catapulted his skate into the head’s face.”

mark giggled, the purity of the sound only mirroring how bright yukhei’s heart was feeling. “at first i thought that we would never be able to hide it, you know?” his words were slightly muffled from the angle of his body, but the older boy could pick them all up, “at first i thought you would give us away. not to have like zero faith in your ability to keep secrets but you’ve never been good at keeping stuff to yourself.” yukhei let out an indignant squawk at the accusation, but didn’t interrupt the storylines that mark was weaving together, “after that, though, i was just convinced that the rest of them would find us out,” he gave a stunted shrug, “hyuck hasn’t gone a week without seeing me since we were seven and he doesn’t even know.” there was a certain incredulity to his words that rang true, the fact that not even the people that they were closest to could recognise what love looked like when it was written across their bodies. 

he picked up where the younger boy had left off, “sometimes i find myself wanting to scream it at them.” mark hummed his approval, far more alert now than he had been a few minutes previously, “i really just want the whole world to know that you’re mine.” it was far too late, or perhaps early, to be having a conversation as significant as this. fatigue was starting to invade the older boy’s bones and he knew that he would have to go to sleep soon if he was to stand any chance of staying on his feet for the entirety of the game tomorrow. he wasn’t sure if it was the tiredness addling his brain that made the next words drift out of his mouth, “one day, mark lee, i would like to put a silver band on your finger and kiss you dumb in front of our entire team.” 

the silk padded mood that had drifted between them up to that point was served as mark pulled away from him quickly, reaching over yukhei’s body to tug another one of the dim lights on. he sat with his back pressed against the headboard, socked feet rubbing together slightly as his brows pinched together in a way that yukhei had always thought to be darling. now, it only concerned him. “or we could not do that?” he backtracked, suddenly uncertain of his own words.

mark laughed, a hint of bitterness penetrating through it, “yukhei, you can’t just say shit like that as a joke.”

the older boy pushed himself up onto his arm, pointedly staring at mark’s face. his eyes were flying around the room as if searching for an escape route, fingers knotted into tiny balls at his sides. “mark.” the boy shook his head quickly, emanating a certain degree of franticness. “mark, look at me.” he reached up with his free arm, letting his fingers gently push the younger boy in his direction. mark slowed his movements partially, tongue coming out to wet his lips as he finally focused his gaze. “it wasn’t a joke.”

the younger boy stilled entirely. yukhei couldn’t decide if that was worse than that overly painful energy that had been seeping from him in waves. he decided that he wasn’t particularly fond of either of them. “what?”

“it wasn’t a joke,” he repeated, slowly, hoping that it came across as patient and not condescending. mark just shook his head again, denial seeming to be his only route for the moment. “shit, look. do you wanna now how serious i am?” he continued without waiting for a response, the rambling already having started, “i went to a jewellers on our last break and spent my entire paycheck on a ring and it’s in my gym bag and i want to marry you, you idiot.”

mark’s eyes were glossy, crystalline tears brimming just above his eyelashes, “you want to marry me?” his voice was featherlight, barely a breath above a whisper. the smile that crept onto his face when yukhei nodded slowly was overflowing with light and the older boy felt his heart clench, “i’d like that a lot.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this and to my beta for being a life saver !! 
> 
> the title is taken from ‘secrets’ by the cure


End file.
